


would you ever want to see me again?

by nothingunrealistic



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scene, specifically the jared and evan scenes from the deh novel that aren't in the musical, this is a formal invitation for val emmich to meet me in the pit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingunrealistic/pseuds/nothingunrealistic
Summary: After their last conversation, Jared tries pretty hard to get over Evan.Even though he fails, it's a surprise when Evan isn't over him, either.
Relationships: Evan Hansen/Jared Kleinman
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69





	would you ever want to see me again?

**Author's Note:**

> I started this nearly two years ago, shortly after the DEH novelization was released, and then abandoned it. Last week, I told a friend about the basic concept and she said I should finish it, so I did. Never give up on your dreams!
> 
> Fic title is from "White Noise" by Antarctigo Vespucci.

Getting into pointless arguments with total strangers on Reddit probably shouldn’t count as a hobby, but that doesn’t stop Jared from spending way too much of his free time doing it anyway. Not that he has a ton of free time these days, between college applications and homework for three different AP classes and website maintenance for a certain ungrateful dick’s flimsy excuse for a nonprofit organization. And that last one takes a lot of time when said website keeps crashing under the weight of thousands of visitors clamoring to read the musings of a suicidal teenager and find a scapegoat, like they have been for days.

Tonight, though, he’s composing a comment for the latest r/indieheads roast while listening to someone’s ten-hour-long ambient playlist, Basinski and Eno and shit like that, with his noise-isolating headphones, the ones that his mom swears will make him go deaf if he keeps using them, while firmly not thinking about anything else, and yet he still notices right away when his phone buzzes, and keeps buzzing. 

A phone call. From who? And why now? It’s too late at night for telemarketers. He pauses the playlist and flips his phone over to see the Incoming Call notification. 

It’s the only person in the world who would ever call him, and also the last person in the world he would expect to call him.

Evan. Evan, who hates the phone and undoubtedly hates him, is calling.

Of course Jared pulls off his headphones and picks up, and prepares himself for either yelling, crying, or self-righteous demands.

“Jared,” Evan says, and it’s nothing like Jared expected; his voice is level enough, but tense, like a rubber band that’s stretched out but isn’t quite at the point of breaking. “I need to tell you —”

Jared grips his phone more firmly. “Why are you calling me? You know how to text.”

“Easier to explain, I guess?” There’s a gusty sigh that fills the line with static, and then “I told the Murphys. The truth, I mean,” and Jared nearly drops his phone because  _ what the fuck. _ “About Connor and the letter and the park, everything.”

“Are you a fucking moron?” he spits into the phone, once he’s gotten it back in place. “Seriously, do you know anything? Please tell me Zoe’s dad wasn’t there.”

“Of course he was,” Evan says, perplexed, like Jared’s the idiot here. Which isn’t totally wrong. “Why?”

“Because you just confessed a crime to a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. The lawyer you committed the crime against.” What crime that is, he doesn’t know, but there has to be something illegal about lying about being friends with a dead kid and creating fake emails supposedly written to and from said kid and using that lie to raise thousands of dollars for an orchard that might not even get built now.

He can still fix this. He can still save them. “Look, my uncle, he’s an attorney, we can talk to him.” He’s never talked to his uncle outside of family reunions. “We just need to get our stories straight.” There’s no way he can tell anyone about his part in this. “Be ready when the Murphys come for us.”

“I don’t really think we should do that,” Evan says. “I’ll go to the Murphys. I’ll explain how it happened, all of it, and just ask them to… to not tell anyone —”

“Evan.” Jared musters up every ounce of sincerity he can manage. If he holds his phone any tighter he’ll crack the screen. “Please, listen to me. Do  _ not  _ do that.” None of this would have happened in the first place if Evan had just nodded and confirmed, if he’d let the Connor craze die down rather than insisting on making everyone remember him for the rest of their lives, if he’d just listened to Jared.

_ You’re the best. I really mean that. _

“Really, Evan, when you think about it, this whole thing is on you.” Sure, he may have discouraged Evan from just telling the truth to the Murphys in the first place, but that doesn’t count as encouraging him to tell elaborate lies to the whole world. “It was your idea.” 

“Look, I’m not trying to point fingers,” and Jared just knows that Evan would love to point fingers if they didn’t have much bigger problems right now. “I know what I did, okay? I’m not blaming you. Or anyone else. I never mentioned your name. They don’t know anything about you.”

Which doesn’t make sense. Partly because he’s been to the Murphys’ house, he sat in their dining room and joked about stealing from their liquor cabinet and preened when Evan called him their tech consigliere. They know who he is.

And partly because Evan said he told the Murphys everything, which includes the emails, which include Jared, which is a direct result of his own stupid feelings. So why wouldn’t his name get mentioned? Why would Evan leave him out of the story?

Why would Evan protect him when Evan doesn’t even like him?

_ Go ahead, do it — _

_ You’re my only… family friend. _

No sense at all.

His hands are on the keyboard again, and with a press of two keys and no conscious thought, autofill takes him to the one page of the Connor Project website that he can’t leave alone. The one with the letter he must have read a dozen times by now. 

_ Dear Evan Hansen: This wasn’t an amazing day after all… _

“Don’t talk to your uncle, please.” He’d almost forgotten Evan was still on the line. “Let’s just hold off a minute and see what happens. Maybe the Murphys won’t even say anything.”

Maybe the grieving family won’t say anything about the random kid who spent months insinuating himself into their lives by feeding them what turned out to be lies about their dead son. Sure. Okay.

It’s quiet, and Jared figures Evan’s waiting for a response. A yes, or a no, or a “go fuck yourself.” Well, he’s already used that last one. 

“If you fuck me…” Jared says instead — and cringes, because God, what a choice of words — before trailing off, letting Evan assume whatever he wants rather than saying the rest of what he’s thinking.  _ If you tell them that I helped you, if you tell them why I helped you, if you do something else monumentally stupid — _

_ — if you climb another  _ **_tree_ ** _ — _

“I won’t,” Evan says. “I swear.”

Jared slumps back in his chair and hits the End Call button. And then realizes that Evan probably expected him to respond in kind, or at least say goodbye. 

“Dear Evan Hansen,” he mumbles to himself. Full name, of course. “I promise I won’t tell on you, because snitches get stitches and I don’t really feel like going to prison. Sincerely —”

_ — your best and most dearest friend — _

“— me.”

He never calls back to finish that sentence. Never responds to the nine texts Evan sends him (nine! From the same guy who used to apologize for double texting!) the next day, offering a limp and self-deprecating apology and the chance to hang out and talk, asking if they’re “good,” though it’s tempting to blow up at him again or just to say “maybe if you’d wanted to hang out with me before your fake family dumped you, we wouldn’t be here.”

They’re not good. They’ve never been good. Jared’s known that for a while now. Apparently Evan still needs to figure it out.

In the following days, then weeks, then months, he stays as far out of Evan’s way as he can — steering clear and avoiding eye contact in the halls, changing seats in their few shared classes to put them on opposite sides of the room, saying hello only when it’d be more conspicuous for them not to speak to each other. And Evan, to his credit, never insists on getting Jared’s attention. He doesn’t look for Jared at lunch anymore, and Jared doesn’t wait for him. He doesn’t text Jared in the mornings to say when he’ll be out sick, and Jared doesn’t go to Evan whenever he shows up again the next day or the next week, looking shaky but still basically alive, to bitch at him for vanishing without warning and making him assume the worst.

(Evan is out sick a lot that fall. Like, way more than usual. It never gets less stressful.)

Evan’s promise that he won’t tell anyone, ever, would be much more reassuring if the thing he was promising not to tell anyone weren’t that he’s a relentless fucking liar who managed to drag Jared aboard his crazy train of high-speed deception and then tried to keep dragging him along when he went off the rails. Except even that’s not the truth, because Jared jumped on board willingly, and he can’t have anyone coming close to the  _ why _ of that. And Evan knows that perfectly well.

_Tell everyone how you_ _helped write emails pretending to be a kid who killed himself._

Jared’s got everything to lose by going public with the truth. But if the Murphys get there first, Evan might decide he’s got nothing to lose by tossing Jared’s name into the ensuing shitstorm. So Jared keeps quiet, and nods and smiles through the churning stomach that kicks into high gear whenever Zoe crosses his path and looks at him a little too long, and with every text Alana sends him that’s a cry for help with the Connor Project (or maybe just a cry for help) buried under exclamation points and smiling emojis. All on top of the ache in his chest that acts up when his English teacher reminds the class of their imminent public speaking assignment, or someone on r/vinyl rhapsodizes about Miles Davis yet again, or, hell, even when he walks through his neighborhood where oaks line the sidewalks and fallen acorns crunch under his shoes. It’s a perpetual, unpredictable pop-up reminder that says  _ hey, remember Evan? Remember when you used to get to talk to Evan and be near him and know things about him that no one else knew? You don’t get that anymore, and you never will again! Fuck you, have a terrible day! _

“Heartbreak” isn’t the right word for it, because that’s not how it feels. That suggests it’s a one-time thing — his heart breaks, it’s broken, end of story. What it’s like is someone taking a knife and a melon baller to his rib cage and scooping out his heart, piece by bloody piece, until nothing is left.

* * *

* * *

Jared does not like to travel. For most of high school, when he’d thought about college at all, he’d planned to get into either RIT or UR and never have to be more than twenty minutes from home. (Not that he’d still live with his parents, or even go back that often — he just wanted the advantage of already knowing where everything was on and off campus.) But Evan’s lies exploding in his face with Jared standing close enough to be in the blast radius, plus Jared hearing from his mom that she’d heard from Evan’s mom that he was planning to take classes at MCC after graduation rather than go away to college, equaled one conclusion: he’s gotta get out of this town.

So he made a plan. Only apply to universities out of state, and choose one that’s far from home, but not too far away, so it won’t be obvious that he’s running from something. Or someone. (Goodbye, Tigers and Yellowjackets; hello, Wolverines and annoying musical theatre students. What was he supposed to do,  _ not _ heed Sufjan imploring him to say Yes! to Michigan?) Swap out glasses for contact lenses, when his student ID picture is being taken and whenever anyone will be looking at him after that, to lower the odds that he’ll be identified as the guy who stood next to Evan Hansen in a few photos and had a headshot on the Connor Project’s website. Keep everyone — dorm neighbors, classmates, members of clubs he’s tentatively joined — at an arm’s length, being friendly but not making friends, because letting people get close to him is what put him in this position.

(Okay, that last one wasn’t part of the plan, but it happened anyway. He may as well take credit for it.)

That was his semester, and in that fourteen-week whirlwind, he’d been so busy with classes and homework and getting to know the town and learning to tolerate his first roommate ever that he hadn’t really had time to think about Evan, or to feel sorry for himself over stuff that happened in high school. (College already provides ample pity party fodder.) But it’s December 20, and after getting in his car the minute he finished his last final and driving for six and a half hours, he’s spending the University of Michigan’s ostensibly nondenominational winter break that just happens to be centered on Christmas at home. Which is where Evan is, and where every one of his memories of Evan lives. 

In this precise moment, though, being back home doesn’t mean he’s  _ at _ home. Fifteen minutes ago, he’d been going through his backpack to weed out notes from high school that had somehow persisted through the first semester of college, and occasionally tossing Spaghetti a crumpled-up worksheet for her to bat around, when his mom had texted him from downstairs asking him to go pick up some groceries, since his car was behind hers in the driveway. So as of five minutes ago, he’s behind the wheel and on the road, running the windshield wipers to deal with the light snow that’s been falling all day and searching for a tolerable radio station because he didn’t feel like plugging in the aux cord.

Normally he’d resent his precious time off being interrupted for errands, but God, he’d missed Wegmans. The availability of Wegmans should have been first on his list of criteria for prospective colleges, even ahead of  _ how far is it from home? _ Without it, his meal options are limited to whatever he can find at other (inferior) grocery stores, mediocre dining hall fare, or free food at campus events, and sometimes it’s simpler just to skip entirely and have more time to work on problem sets, or sleep. (Personally, he thinks the freshman fifteen is a lie invented by university administrators to con naïve students into thinking the meal plans are worth their money. If anything, he’s gained the freshman negative fifteen.)

He’s wondering if his mom will notice or care if he slips a bag of their chocolate-covered peanut butter-filled pretzels into the grocery haul, on her debit card and Shoppers Club card, when he spots a lone figure on the otherwise-empty sidewalk. They’re heading in the same direction he’s going, toward the bus stop at the end of the block, hunched against the cold, and as Jared passes by them he sees their face —

It’s Evan.

He doesn’t look exactly like Jared remembers. His coat is unfamiliar, probably new, and he’s had a haircut or two. The low-hanging backpack he’d always lugged around the school halls is gone. But it’s Evan, unmistakably. Jared couldn’t fail to recognize him after ten years of knowing him.

He’s had dreams that started this way. Some of which might have qualified as nightmares.

All of this runs through his mind in a fraction of a second, without conscious thought, and not much more thinking happens before he pulls over and brakes by the curb, waiting for Evan to catch up. If this isn’t some kind of sign that he should try to make things right with Evan, then whatever  _ is _ a sign had better be a fucking billboard. And if Evan doesn’t want to engage, he can just walk on by. (Or, if he does engage and things go terribly, Jared can just drive away.)

Evan slows as he approaches the car; when Jared rolls down the passenger window halfway, he stops completely, squinting at him through the snow, but not speaking first. This is it — the kind of moment he’s hoped for, imagined, dreaded for months now. These will be his first real words to Evan in a long time. He has to say something clever, something memorable, something that won’t make Evan walk away.

“Still walking around like a weirdo, eh?”

_ Eh? _ Clearly spending all his time even closer to Canada than usual has gotten to him.

“Jared?”

Is he really that hard to recognize now? Even for Evan? Damn contacts. “Yeah. Hop in.” Evan doesn’t move until he adds, “Unless you like standing out in the cold more?” 

He hadn’t expected Evan to accept, or really planned to offer in the first place, but Evan crosses the snow-dusted curb strip and reaches for the door handle, so Jared hastily smacks the power lock button to let him in. Freezing air rushes in behind him; once he’s closed the door, Jared rolls the window back up.

“Sorry about the snow,” Evan says, scraping his boots against the floor mat. “I tried to, you know, stomp most of it off, but…”

“No worries, bro. Where are we going?”

“Pottery Barn.” Evan pulls at his seat belt. “I’m working there.”

Jared’s pretty sure he knows where that is, but he punches the name into Waze to be certain before easing up on the brake. “Well, thank God. I’ve been looking for someone to sell me some overpriced home décor.”

Evan doesn’t laugh; it would have come as a surprise if he had. He just keeps glancing over as they get back up to speed, like he expects Jared to vanish at any moment.

“Do I really look that weird without glasses? They weren’t attached to my face, you know.”

“You, uh, look good, man,” Evan says, and Jared — well, there’s no other word for it than panic.

“I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but I’m still not into guys.” A stupid, obvious lie, but then Evan’s track record on picking those up is mixed. He’d seen right through the whole Israeli girlfriend story, and yet he’d actually believed that Jared went to the gym to gawk at women when they were surrounded by muscle-bound men. (Come to think of it, Evan had definitely been staring at one of those guys himself…)

Jared pushes that thought away, because Evan is talking again. “I thought you were at Michigan. What are you doing home?”

How does he know that? Did Jared let it slip on some social media account that Evan still follows, or is the information flow between their moms about their sons’ college plans two-way? “I quit and joined the army.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Obviously. I’m home for winter break, genius.”

“Well, you know, not everyone gets a winter break still, it’s easy to forget,” Evan says, “because some of us have to work for a living.” It’s a bit of a dig, a punch on the shoulder but not a slap in the face. That’s the Evan he always liked best, the one who says what he’s thinking without trying to be nice about it and doesn’t apologize.

“Working at Pottery Barn doesn’t count as working for a living,” Jared declares, slowing as the stoplight ahead turns yellow. “You should be mining coal or something if you’re going to say that. Start swinging a pickaxe.”

“I don’t think you’d feel that way if you’d ever worked in customer service.”

“I was a camp counselor. For years.”

“Kids don’t ask for your manager.” Evan peels off his gloves, clearly getting comfortable, and Jared relaxes as well, only now realizing he’d been too tense to even lean against his seat. He cranks up the heat a notch further; Evan presses his hands against the air vents. It  _ is _ nearly freezing outside — hard to blame him for needing to defrost his fingers.

“So… what are you doing out here?” Evan says. “Thought you’d be enjoying your winter break at home. And I figure you weren’t driving around looking for me.”

“I was.” Wait, shit, no. “Enjoying my break at home, that is.” The light goes green; Jared turns right. “But Mom wanted me to go get some stuff from Wegmans, because in the irony of all ironies, we ran out of olive oil. Guess the miracle of Hanukkah only applies to the stuff you set on fire.”

“The Maccabees would be disappointed.” Evan sets his hands, presumably now fully thawed, in his lap. “Wegmans isn’t really in the same direction, though.”

“Not like I don’t have time. You know how your mom always said we wouldn’t appreciate how good the traffic is here until we went somewhere else?”

“Yeah, she still says that.”

“She’s right. Driving in Ann Arbor is a fucking nightmare.”

“You know, not everyone drives,” Evan says, so indignant he has to be making fun of himself, and they both crack up. “Some of us take the bus.”

The conversation kind of peters out there along with their laughter, because Evan’s comment about taking the bus has Jared remembering junior year, of all things. He’d gotten both his driver’s license and his mom’s old minivan, and been given free rein to drive himself to school; Evan, without a license or a spare car, was still stuck on the bus or carpooling. That winter, there were a few mornings when just as Jared rolled out of his driveway, he’d get a text from Evan, saying that his bus was late and his mom was already at work and could Jared swing by to pick him up, please? And Jared, though he’d dutifully complained every time, had never hesitated to say yes.

While they were talking, this car ride had felt just like those, as if they’d flipped back two years in the calendar and forgotten why the two of them sharing the same space should be anything but mundane. In this silence, though, and now with Evan yet again looking his way every five seconds like he’s got a bombshell to drop, he can’t forget a single day of those two years.

Evan opens his mouth. Jared braces for impact.

“I never told anyone.”

Oh.

Maybe Evan keeping that particular promise shouldn’t surprise him, seeing as no one ever kicked down his door to confiscate his laptop or drag him away for interrogation. But all these months later, the question of  _ why _ Evan ever protected him has gone unanswered. So isn’t he entitled to a little astonishment over that protection lasting so long?

And does he really have to say it back? Isn’t it obvious?

Jared keeps his eyes on the road, straight ahead. Safety first. “Forget about it.”

That must be good enough for Evan, because he doesn’t say another word until they’re nearly at the Pottery Barn, rounding the last bend in the road. “When do you go back to Michigan?”

“Winter semester starts on the third, so, as close to that as possible.”

“Not long, then.” Evan’s briefly quiet again, and Jared is too busy looking for the entrance to the parking lot to look at him. “I don’t know if you’d want to… meet up between then and now? But if you do, I’ll be around.”

Even with everything they’ve said in here, that’s a hell of an offer. In response, Jared goes with the first and snarkiest thing he can think of. “You mean when you’re not busy working for a living?”

“Shut up,” Evan says, grinning. Jared can’t help smiling back. “Yes, when I’m not working. Just text me, or…”

“You got it.”

“Thanks for the ride.” Evan unbuckles his seatbelt and pops open the door. “See you.”

“See you,” Jared echoes, watching Evan get out and cross the parking lot, thinking of how weird it is to be able to say that to Evan and mean it.

Something even weirder happens as he leaves the lot and returns to the main road. There’s the strangest thumping in his chest, regular and strong. Jared’s not the betting type, but he’d wager anything that it means he still has a heart after all, in one piece.

How’s that for a miracle?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on Tumblr @nothingunrealistic.


End file.
